U.S. urges 'very substantial' prison
term for Michael Avenatti over Nike extortion
Posted By: Garnet, 6/17/2021 3:41:34 PM
The once high-flying California lawyer Michael Avenatti deserves a "very substantial" prison sentence for trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike Inc, U.S. prosecutors told a judge. The Wednesday night recommendation came one week after Avenatti's lawyers said their client should spend no more than six months behind bars plus one year of home confinement. U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe is scheduled to sentence Avenatti on June 30 in Manhattan. Probation officers recommend eight years in prison for Avenatti, and prosecutors said federal guidelines recommend more than 11 years. Lawyers for Avenatti did not immediately respond on Thursday to requests for comment.
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SCOTUS Wimps Out On
Obamacare—Again 14 replies
Obamacare—Again 14 replies
Obamacare has once again been rescued by a Supreme Court that seems determined to keep it alive regardless of precedent or common sense. Thursday morning, the justices dismissed the latest case based on the dubious proposition that a coalition of 18 GOP states had no legal standing to challenge the “reform” law or its infamous insurance mandate. The majority didn’t deign to consider the merits of the lawsuit, which argued that the mandate was unconstitutional and inseverable from the rest of the statute. The Court’s cowardice drew a blistering dissent from Justice Samuel Alito, who accused the majority of ignoring decades of precedent in order to deny the states standing.
Supreme Court sides with Catholic
foster agency that excludes
same-sex couples in 9-0 ruling 6 replies
foster agency that excludes
same-sex couples in 9-0 ruling 6 replies
The Supreme Court sided unanimously with a Catholic foster agency in a dispute against the city of Philadelphia over whether it should be banned from participating in the city's foster program because it excludes same-sex couples.
The group, Catholic Social Services (CSS), claimed that "Philadelphia’s attempts to exclude the Catholic Church from foster care" violated the First Amendment. Lawyers for the city, meanwhile, said that CSS "lacks a constitutional right to demand that DHS offer it a contract that omits the same nondiscrimination requirement every other FFCA must follow when performing services for the City."
In a 9-0 ruling, the justices sided with Catholic Social Services.
The once high-flying California lawyer Michael Avenatti deserves a "very substantial" prison sentence for trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike Inc, U.S. prosecutors told a judge.
The Wednesday night recommendation came one week after Avenatti's lawyers said their client should spend no more than six months behind bars plus one year of home confinement.
U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe is scheduled to sentence Avenatti on June 30 in Manhattan.
Probation officers recommend eight years in prison for Avenatti, and prosecutors said federal guidelines recommend more than 11 years.
Lawyers for Avenatti did not immediately respond on Thursday to requests for comment.
A Baptist pastor in Calgary, Alberta, was arrested a second time Monday after a police helicopter discovered where his church had been secretly gathering since authorities locked their building.
Pastor Tim Stephens of Fairview Baptist Church also debated the legal and theological grounds of Alberta’s public health orders with the arresting officer, who quoted Jesus twice before driving the pastor to jail while his young children wept.(Snip)“A police helicopter was deployed to search for and detect this gathering, and to collect evidence against Pastor Stephens of non-compliance with public health restrictions,” according to a press release
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says he won’t support a bipartisan infrastructure spending proposal unveiled last week because he believes it doesn’t do enough to address the needs of the country and shields the wealthy from tax increases.
Sanders’s opposition means the proposal would need to garner at least 11 Republican votes in the 50-50 Senate if Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) puts it on the floor and the rest of the Democratic caucus votes for it.
"I wouldn't vote for it," he told reporters Monday evening. "The bottom line is there are needs facing this country.
Speaking on the One NYCHA podcast, Senator Chuck Schumer referred to mentally disabled children as "retarded." That word has long since gone out of favor with those who seek to destigmatize children and adults who are developmentally disabled.This initiative will actually house the homeless population that is actually living on our streets," the host for the New York City Housing Authority said. "We see them every day, and we are about to house them, and they are against it! It's unbelievable." The full recording of his appearance is on Facebook.
"Yes," Schumer said. "I have found that my whole career. I wanted to build, in my first, in Assembly.
Nine of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol are already facing primary challenges – and some of them may have a very hard time holding on to their seats. Trump vows to work against those Republicans as they run for reelection in 2022, and has already endorsed one primary challenger and signaled there are more to come.
"Instead of attacking me and, more importantly, the voters of our movement, top establishment Republicans in Washington should be spending their energy in opposing Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and the Democrats," Trump said in his February CPAC speech.
It has now become all but impossible on any given day to find a major media news outlet that doesn’t feature at least one apocalyptic opinion piece warning us that democracy is under attack by the diabolical Republican Party and its sinister leader Donald Trump. This kind of nonsense was once limited to nutty internet forums and social media sites. Now it is a staple of “serious journalism” in publications like the New York Times and the leading broadcast networks. This hysteria is not only unfettered from any genuine threat posed by the GOP or anyone else but is itself eminently dangerous to our system of representative democracy.
CNN’s Brian Stelter was mocked by callers who referred the media pundit as a "minister of misinformation" and evoked disgraced former CNN darling Michael Avenatti during an appearance on C-SPAN’s "Washington Journal" on Thursday.
"Mr. Stelter is the biggest minister of misinformation I have ever heard and I’m a news junkie," a caller identified as Kevin from Indiana told the liberal CNN host. "This gentleman told the American people, and his news organization…for four years that there was Russia collusion and actually, after all the $35-$40 million dollars and government investigation, we come to find out there was zero. Zero collusion from the Trump administration and Russia," the caller continued
The tidal wave of probability, circumstantial evidence of such mass and consistency that it is now almost irrefutable, that the novel coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, will alter China’s relationship with the world and particularly with the United States.Accompanied as it is by the increasing volume of evidence that Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases — a post he has held for 37 years — and chief medical advisor to the president, went to unjustified lengths to deny that the coronavirus was anything but an unforeseeable escapee from a live food market, the unraveling story will ramify very widely.
For more than a year, it has been consecrated media fact that former President Donald Trump and his White House, on June 1 of last year, directed the U.S. Park Police to use tear gas against peaceful Lafayette Park protesters, all to enable a Trump photo-op in front of St. John's Church. That this happened was never presented as a possibility or likelihood but as indisputable truth. And it provoked weeks of unmitigated media outrage, presented as one of the most egregious assaults on the democratic order in decades.
This tale was so pervasive in the media landscape that it would be impossible
White House officials were reportedly “perplexed” at Vice President Kamala Harris’ performance in her first foreign policy trip under the new administration, CNN reported Wednesday.
Harris returned from her trip to Guatemala and Mexico on Wednesday. The trip was intended to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration, but the tour ultimately drew criticism from both sides of the aisle in Washington. NBC News also released an interview with Harris in the middle of her trip in which she fumbled an answer
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President Joe Biden signed a law Thursday to make 'Juneteenth National Independence Day' a federal holiday, starting from tomorrow. 'Juneteenth marks both the long, hard night of slavery and subjugation and a promise of a brighter morning to come,' Biden said at the White House signing ceremony, surrounded by Democratic and Republican guests. 'This is a day of profound weight and profound power, a day in which we remember the moral stain and the terrible toll that slavery took on the country - and continues to take.' On Wednesday night, the House of Representatives passed the bill with 14 Republicans voting against it. In the Senate,
Football star Megan Rapinoe and actress and producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas are joining Victoria's Secret in what the lingerie giant is calling a "dramatic shift" for the brand.
They are among several new faces who will help promote the brand which is best known for its lingerie-clad models known as Angels.
Victoria's Secret still generates billions of dollars in sales.
However, its hyper-sexualised image has fallen out of fashion in recent years.
Ms Rapinoe and Ms Chopra Jonas will form part of "The VS Collective" a group of women who will work with the company on "collaborations, business partnerships and cause-related initiatives".
How Do We Regain Trust in the FBI?
42 replies
Newsmax released an article this week that gives voice to further distrust of America’s once-premiere law enforcement agency. The column was based on a series of questions and concerns presented by Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) regarding the still murky details around the January 6th storming of the Capitol building. Two questions lobbed at the FBI are both haunting and disheartening: “What did the FBI know? And when did they know it?”
The fact that the agency responsible for investigating the lawlessness of that date is itself under scrutiny is alarming.
The Confederate battle flag, which was crafted as a symbol of opposition to the abolishment of slavery, is just recently tired. We don’t see it much anymore. However, on the 6th, when the stormers rained on the nation’s most precious hut, waving Old Glory — the memo was received: the American flag is its replacement.
President Biden, Madame Harris and members of Congress: the American flag has been hijacked as code for a specific belief. God bless those believers, they can have it. Like the Confederate, it is tattered, dated, divisive, and incorrect. It no longer represents democracy and freedom. It no longer represents ALL of us. It’s not fair
The election of 2020 is going to lay bare the dereliction of the Supreme Court for all to see. The COVD-19 pandemic gave numerous state election officials an excuse to implement far-reaching changes to our election processes. Those changes obviously made our systems vulnerable to fraud. States implemented massive mail-in balloting at the same time they relaxed ballot security and voter identification. They even extended the voting periods -- to give the criminals more time to commit their fraud.
All these changes were unconstitutional. (snip) The Supreme Court declined to get involved.
Racism against black Chicago residents constitutes a public health crisis within the city, Mayor Lori Lightfoot declared on Thursday. Lightfoot said in a press conference that it is “way past time that as a city” made the declaration, which followed the publication of a Tuesday report by the Chicago Department of Public Health reporting the difference in life expectancy between black and non-black residents is 9.2 years.
The Department of Justice is mounting a case arguing that laws in West Virginia and Arkansas that bar transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports are unconstitutional, despite the overwhelming majority of Americans supporting biological gender segregation in sports, according to a report citing court papers. “The United States has a significant interest in ensuring that all students, including students who are transgender, can participate in an educational environment free of unlawful discrimination,” the DOJ said in court documents filed in a West Virginia court case Thursday, according to a report by the Daily Mail.(Snip)A poll from May found that a majority of Americans don’t support transgender
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Researchers found black Americans were much more likely to face car crash injuries with have a rate of 15.2 ER visits for every 1,000 people compared to a rate of 4.3 for every 1,000 for white Americans. Additionally, young adults, those in the South, and those with less comprehensive insurance are also more likely to visit
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Middle income families are lashing out against Joe Biden's punitive new tax plan that would claim a large chunk of the amount someone leaves to their kids when they die just because it has gone up in value over the course of their lifetime. The harsh new tax - dubbed Biden's 'death tax' - is hidden in his American Families Plan and it's receiving ferocious backlash. It proposes that when someone dies, any asset they leave behind that has appreciated in value by more than $1million since the time they bought it should be taxed. The tax rate would go as high as 40% - double
U.S. Catholic bishops overwhelmingly approved the drafting of a “teaching document” that many of them hope will rebuke Catholic politicians, including President Joe Biden, for receiving Communion despite their support for abortion rights.
The decision, vehemently opposed by a minority of bishops, came despite appeals from the Vatican for a more cautious and collegial approach to the divisive issue. And it raises questions of how closely the bishops will be able to cooperate with the Biden administration on issues such as immigration and racial injustice. The result of the vote — 168 in favor and 55 against — was announced Friday
Liberal Washington Square Park residents have said they are afraid of asking for more cops to tackle the daily after-dark raves because they don't want to be viewed as less progressive. New Yorkers living around the historic Manhattan park told the New York Times they feel it is 'time to draw the line' on the escalating parties which they claim have left many 'too afraid to go inside.'(Snip) 'This is the park you come to chill out,' said Edith Molina from the Bronx. 'In the Bronx, you have gang violence, and police run you out of parks. Here, police don't do anything.'